Rethinking Tea

Spilt tea and Modern Enslavement

The daily chai drinking tradition intrigues me. I began collecting tea bags, as the stained skin of a used tea-bag, had something frail yet grotesque about it.

I was moved when I delved deeper and learned about the Indian history of the teabag, its bloody colonial history - the opium wars, the East India Company, and mass enslavement. I decided to make a commentary on this history, to contradict and question the way that tea is marketed as calming and recreational to the exploitation that is endured during its manufacturing process.

I decided to cut out unique tea-bag sized 'Kurtas' from my collected used tea bags: commenting on the way that tea-pickers were treated as silent dolls/puppets with very little voice and freedom.

I created a tea bag that when used with hot water unfolds and inflates as a dress to convey this idea further. Moreover, amongst these hanging kurtas, I created one that is a book bound with the intention to communicate the contradictory history of tea. In this book, I reveal how human mistreatment and trafficking is prevalent till date.

I envision this piece as an installation that covers the entire room. Viewers would be confronted by navigating this hanging maize while listening to the chaotic sounds of the past and the present of somber tea manufacturing and luxurious contrast of marketing and manufacturing.

Book:

Installation:

Kurta shaped tea-bag:

Installation:

Around 70 unique hand made wire hangers and hand-cut tea bags Kurta created with the intention to illustrate the prevalence of modern human trafficking and enslavement in the tea manufacturing industry.

Here is a video explaining my process - which is repetitive yet individually unique mimicking the cases studied for this project. The teabag kurtas resemble a grotesque skin-like covering, concealing the stories of the tea leaves within.